Moral Fables For A Better Life

Thursday, June 23, 2016

For a
number of years I searched in religion -- east and west -- trying to sort out my own life. I also worked as a school teacher. I have seen a variety of
people wrestling with their emotions, their belief systems -- advanced yogis, sex abuse
victims, the mentally ill, ordinary people getting by. All of them
struggling to reconcile their emotions and ideas in order to produce happiness -- or
the equivalent, lesser goal of reducing pain.

Certain
truths repeatedly forced themselves upon me. I've listed them
here, in no particular order, and they may be of help to others. They may not
be of help to others. You decide. It's your life and you've got to live it. Adopt
them or junk them as your please.

(1) Emotions
are biological processes much like sweating, farting and breathing.

Generally, they have little 'meaning'. They
are not a statement about who we are, what we are worth, how society should
deal with us, or where we are going to go after we are dead, however much we
might like to think otherwise, however much others might tell us so. Think of
them as semi-random noise much like freeway traffic and you'll save yourself a
lot of needless worry. When you tell yourself they mean this, that or the
other, you are almost certainly wrong. You are likely to be seriously wrong if your hold
insistent views about the personal significance of those emotions, or
that they are a definitive guide to you or the world.

(2) Ideas
are important in managing emotions.

It's nice
to feel good emotions (the ones we want) and distressing to feel bad ones (the
other kind). That's ok. And it's good to seek to get happy ones and remove sad
ones. But be careful how you pursue this. If your road map is wrong (your ideas)
then you'll finish up in a wrong place no matter how passionately you work at
happiness.

(3) The
'meaning' thing is entirely overrated and in some circumstances quite dangerous.

When we put
certain ingredients into a person's life then particular emotions often result. The
person attaches 'meaning' to those emotions, meaning that is constrained
by their ideas, language, personal history, and values. They then give themselves a
permission to deal with those emotions in a particular way. But if the ideas used for assessing emotions are faulty or deficient then bad
outcomes will inevitably ensue. Garbage In - Garbage Out applies.

People
with a psychopathic psychological makeup get worse if they get heavily involved
in a diet of pornography, especially the violent kind. We all recall the cosseted
narcissists with loving parents and marriage partners who were never challenged
on their ideas about their entitlements and their expectations of others, and
hence see no problem in shooting all their family members who have 'failed'
them. Their isolation is the key to a bad outcome for themselves and those
around them.

The critical generator of these bad outcomes is the attachment of wrong ideas to powerful emotions.

(4) The
twin siren songs of hope and fear.

Strong
emotions bind us by two sets of underlying ideas:

(1) The
hope that we will achieve social recognition or acceptance from others by a narrative account about ourselves;

(2) The
fear that if we abandon that narrative account then we will have failed our own life.

For
example, I might have a deep hope to be a world class musician in a great
orchestra. I invest heavily in that process but I always end up as a second
stringer, filling in when the regulars can't make it. My hope is for public
adulation and financial reward. The fear is that if I turn to some other line
of work that I will be a failed human being, that I will have no 'life' as
measured against this script. So I tread on, refusing to abandon or modify the
astonishing narrative I have of my life, until events or age force reality upon
me; that my narrative is unsustainable in its present form.

Suicide
candidates are especially prone to being caught on these twin prongs of hope
and fear about their lives. They are especially vulnerable if they have suffered injustices or
hardship in the pursuit of their vision. The sweet siren song messages of hope
and fear are always deeply addictive and mutually reinforcing. But they are not
an accurate reflection of the world or the person.

Only in
rare cases (war and certain death, for example) is suicide a good option. (Look,
I have friends who have suicided or seriously considered it so nothing I'm
saying here should be seen as a cheap shot. I know people can be distressed,
troubled and see no way out. But the messages they play on an endless loop are
usually not as compelling as they appear when they are examined closely, and
certainly not in the person's best interest. People need to examine the
dynamics of their thought processes very carefully. Just saying.)

People
who have thoughts of suicide are especially vulnerable and should seek
immediate professional counseling. They're not broken or failed human beings, just ordinary
run-of-the-mill people suffering distressing emotions. The ideas that feed
those underlying powerful emotions need to be put on the table and examined
just as you would with skin rash or an allergic reaction.

(4) Emotions
are transitory. They are not YOU.

Imagine a
heated conversation. You have crossed swords with a friend. You feel deeply
outraged over some issue. Your voice is raised and nothing is stopping you. You
insist to their face that you will not change, that your views are fixed and
unalterable, that your outrage is real and unshakeable -- "This is who I
am," you fiercely proclaim, "And nothing can shake me."

And just
then, exactly when you feel all powerful and vindicated and warm and sated, a Siberian
tiger appears from around the corner of the living room.

Please be
very clear about this. In a matter of half a second, all of this is gone as if
it never existed. Your outrage, your certainty, your sense of power and fulfillment -- all vanished in a second! So what happened to "This is who I
am"? What happened to you and your 'unshakeable' definition of yourself?

The
world is real. By comparison, your emotions are not. Yes, they have a certain reality
and we need them like we need clothes. Sometimes they grow on us like hair, to
keep us warm. But they are not YOU. Remember all those psych studies? The
photos of the monkeys strapped in with their brains on display? The scientist
puts the electric probe at point X in the brain and the monkey feels powerful
emotions of terror. He probes a millimeter away and the monkey is swamped by
feelings of sexual arousal, orgasm, raging anger or peacefulness.

These
emotions -- we need them and we enjoy them -- but they are NOT anything like
what they are cracked up to be. And they are especially not what we want them
or need them to be just because we have told ourselves so many times. And they
especially are not YOU. You are just a monkey with the probes hitting where you
don't want them to.

(5) Types
of pain.

There are
three types of pain, as any parent of a six year old with a toothache can tell
you:

(P1) biological -- the actual toothache pain
which might temporarily be solved with an aspirin or a gum salve, but
ultimately needs a dentist specialist to fix.

(P2) emotional/psychological -- the youngster may
feel distressed about going to the dentist. They work themselves into an hysterical
and irrational state of fear over imagined pains to come that are never really
going to eventuate. This can often be more painful to the child than the
actual toothache itself even though it is purely imagined. The best the parent
can do is to soothe the child down and waylay their fears by reassurance and
sensible talk.

(P3) contrived -- the youngster tells mum they
have a toothache as an excuse to stay home from school. An easy one to fix.

The
point about this categorization is that a great deal of pain is induced
emotional pain. It
afflicts adults as well as children throughout life yet we rarely recognize it
as such or make efforts to test for it. Yet it is essentially self-manufactured.

We
feel a powerful painful (negative) emotion and we declare it to be a real state
of the world, fixed forever in the universe and unshakably true
and trustworthy.

As the
example with the Siberian tiger shows that's not always a safe conclusion, and
especially so the more powerful the emotion.

(6) Solutions
-- processing intense emotions.

The ideas
above provide the basis for managing intense, uncomfortable emotions. The
critical step is to recognize that there needs to be mechanisms in place to
distinguish between real pain (P1) and self-induced or hysterical pain of an
emotional nature (P2). Then arises the task of examining the ideas that gave rise to the hysterical pain.

Once a
pain is identified as self-induced it can be challenged or modified. (P2) pains
are not fixed, immutable or necessary.And they are sustained by false ideas.

There are
four components:

* TESTING
-- separate oneself from the intense emotions and test whether or not the painful
emotions are a P1 or P2 type.

* RESOURCES-- seek professional help where appropriate. People cannot always effectively challenge their own egos.

* LIFESTYLE
-- install new belief systems and lifestyles that minimize false beliefs
about oneself and the world.

All of
this is consistent with the key principles of Buddhism. Pain exists. But the real
enemy is secondary pain, a false attachment to ideas about oneself and the
world. The noble 8-fold path provides a recipe for building a better emotional
life.

(7) Practical

* TESTING
-- You don't have a Siberian tiger to shake you out of your false emotions, so
do the next best thing -- overwhelm and distract your senses. Go to the zoo and
stand around the animals for a day. Spend several hours or a whole day at a
football game, crowded shopping mall or similar. The intention here is to be
swamped by emotional noise from others that turns off the gushers of high
intensity emotions that you may be struggling with. Go for a series of roller
coaster rides. Go surfing for a day. You should come back feeling emotionally
washed out. How real are your intense pain emotions now?

* IDEAS
-- Modify the underlying belief system that people can or should care about you.
If you died tomorrow some might cry but overall they will move on. The process
is called 'taking out the garbage'. It.Has.No.Meaning. No-one cares. Belief in
a higher power (in whatever form) is often beneficial. It provides an altruistic
purpose and a mental balance to self-preoccupation. If you don't like religion
then get involved in an environmental group or a homeless shelter -- anything,
as long as it is basically decent or noble-minded, where you are not in charge,
and where it stops you thinking about yourself all the time. If it is mentally
stimulating then that's a plus.

* RESOURCES
-- Seek professional help where appropriate. Review your personal and life
goals to see if they are realistic, and your value systems. Make a list of
other loves or enjoyments in your life other than the item causing you your
current bug bear. Stop making yourself a target for needless worry by investing all of yourself in a small number of critical issues.

* LIFESTYLE
-- Stay away from negative people. Stop wondering how to get them to recognize
you (they never will so don't bother). Simply click the delete button and move
on. Nothing is fixed except that hole in the ground waiting for each of us. In 10,
20 30 years no-one will care. Absolutely no-one. So stop caring about others
and what they think. Care about yourself now.

Emotions
are great when they are going well. But remember, they are products of the
body, and in the first instance are just noise. We provide the meaning and
significance. Challenge your assumptions about your emotions, confront them and
see which of them is really you.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

con artists
alcoholics and drug addicts
needy, controlling or lazy people
violent people
people needing 'saving'
people who want to 'save' you
the mentally ill
criminals
people who always put their interests first

Associate With People Who are Happy...Who Have Their Own Means of Getting HappinessAside From Getting It From You.

people who are......

practicing their own religion for their own benefit
passionate about a political cause
committed to an altruistic or charitable enterprise
heavily involved in sport or the arts
hard workers, making money

.... anyone who has a productive goal, too busy to abuse you.

Check Your LifeWhich Years Were The Most Miserable?Which Of Them Were Brought About By Dealing With an Asshole?

MORAL:

Stay Away From Negative People.Work tirelessly when you first meet peopleto ascertain if they can damage you.If they can then vigorously give them the boot.The nice people are out there. Find them.